How had they found her? That was the question, the only one that mattered, because the 'how' would supply the 'who', and the 'who' was what he needed to know.
Now. Had she phoned anyone else? That was the place to start. He would have to find out. He took his cell phone out of his pocket to phone Telkom.
No, phone John Afrika first. Fuck. He knew what the Regional Commissioner: Detective Services and Criminal Intelligence was going to say. He could already hear the voice, the consternation. How, Benny? How?
Griessel sighed, a shallow, hurried breath. That fucking feeling he had had this morning - that there was trouble brewing...
And this day was still far from over.
Mouton pushed his luxury leather desk chair up to Groenewald, sat down and said: 'Let the games begin.'
'Let me explain to you about a compilation first,' said Steenkamp, leaning over the desk, picking up a pencil and twirling it between his fingers. 'Some or other clown decides he wants to make money out of Valentine's Day or Christmas or something. He phones a few people and says: "Have you got a song for me?" There are no studio costs, not a cent, because the recording has already been done. That makes a huge difference, because all he has to do is market the CD a bit, make a few TV ads that he gives to a guy with an Apple and Final Cut to cobble together, so really he's only paying for the airtime and he sticks it in the fifteen-second slots in Seven de Laan for three days and all the old biddies snap it up.'
'He does his accounts on the back of a cigarette box,' said Mouton irritably.
'No overheads. We sit here with an admin department and financial department and marketing and promotions department. We carry forty per cent of a distribution wing, because we are a full-service operation - we stand by the artist for the long term. We build a brand, we don't just flog a few CDs,' said Steenkamp.
'Tell him about RISA and NORM,' said Mouton.
Steenkamp pulled a sheet of A4 paper out of the printer beside him and made a start with the pencil, writing RISA alongside. 'Recording Industry of South Africa.'
'Fucking mafia,' said Mouton.
'At least they present the SAMA Awards,' said Groenewald, and Mouton snorted derisively.
'They take twenty-five cents for every CD we sell, because they ...' he made quotation marks with his fingers,' "protect us from piracy".'
'Ha!' said Mouton.
'Do you think the independent making the compilation is going to keep score? Is he going to pay on every CD? Not likely, because it's work, it's a schlepp, it's expense and it's profit.' Steenkamp scribbled another star, wrote NORM on the paper.
'NORM are the guys who have to see to it that, if I write a song and you do a cover of it, I get paid. Six point seven per cent. But that's the theory. In practice it's only us big players who pay. If you're an independent, you have to put down your NORM money when the CDs are printed. So you print five thousand here and another five thousand there, but you tell NORM you only had five thousand printed, you show them the slips, and you pay only half. NORM is ripped off and the songwriter is ripped off and the independent is laughing all the way to the bank.'
'We have to pay NORM as the sales come in,' said Mouton, 'audited figures, everything above board. But then the artists complain: "Why is my share so small?"' He mimicked Nell's voice again. 'Let me tell you another thing. Half of the hits in this country are German pop songs that have been translated. Or Dutch or Flemish or whatever. What Adam did - and he was brilliant at it - he had guys in Europe and as soon as there was a pop song that stood out they would email it in MP3 format and Adam would sit down with a pen and write Afrikaans lyrics. Forty minutes, that's all it took, and he would phone Nerina Stahl and—'
'That was before she left...'
'All her fucking hits were German pop, who do you think is going to get them for her now? Anyway, we sit with the whole caboodle, we have to administer it all. That money has to go to Germany, the songwriter and the publisher have to get their cut. But here comes this independent and he gets someone to do a cover of Adam's translation of this German song . . . you get it?'
'I think so,' said Dekker, engrossed.
'... and now Adam must be paid, the German and his publisher must be paid, but the independent says, no, we only made five thousand, but he's lying, because there's no control over distribution, the independents do their own now and nobody keeps track.'
'That's why the cheques are so big.'
'Then the bastard comes along and says we are bloody cheating him.'
'Let him make his own CDs and we'll see. Let him pay two hundred thousand for a studio out of his own pocket, let him cough up his own four hundred thousand for a TV campaign.'
'Amen,' said Groenewald. 'Tell him about the passwords and the PDFs.'
'Yes,' said Mouton. 'Ask Sakkie Nell if the independent sends him a password-protected PDF.'
Steenkamp drew another star. PDF. 'There are only three or four big CD distributors in South Africa. These are the guys who load up the CDs and distribute them to the music shops around the country, Musica and Look and Listen, Checkers and your Pick 'n Pay Hypermarkets. Adam started a distribution arm, but it's an independent company now, AMD, African Music Distribution, we own forty per cent. What they do is, like all the big players, they keep sales records of every CD and every three months they send a password-protected PDF file of every artist's sales to me. We transfer the money to the artist...'
'Before we get the money from the distributors,' said Mouton.
'That's right. We pay it out of our own pockets. The risk is ours. I email him the same PDF statement, just as I received it from the distributor, complete, so he can see everything. Nobody can fiddle with the statement because we don't have the password.'
'So tell me how can we rip them off?' said Mouton.
'Impossible,' said Groenewald.
'Because we're too fucking honest, that's the problem.'
'But let him make his own CDs. Let him feel the overheads. Then we'll talk again.'
'Amen,' his lawyer confirmed.
Chapter 35
John Afrika had ranted and raved over the telephone: 'You phone the father in America, Benny, you phone him, fuck knows I can't do it, how the hell, I'm on my way, jissis, Benny, how the fuck did it happen?' He slammed the phone down and Griessel was left standing with his cell phone in his hand, wondering whether Jack Fischer and Associates had a job for an alcoholic who was stuffing up two cases in a single day. He felt like smashing his phone against the wall. But he had just hung his head and stared at the floor, thinking what was the use of being sober, he might as well get drunk. Then Vusi ran in, breathless, and said, 'Benny, it was the delivery van that nearly hit us - we have an eyewitness.'
So now they were on the pavement with a woman, dark glasses, early thirties, a little pale and shy. At first glance she was quite ordinary, unimpressive, until she began to talk in a soft, melodious voice that seemed to come from the depths of her heart. She said her name was Evelyn Marais and she had seen everything.
She had come out of Carlucci's on the way to her car across the street. She pointed to a red Toyota Tazz, about ten years old. She had heard shots and had stopped in the middle of the street. She spoke calmly and clearly, without haste, but she was obviously not entirely comfortable with all the attention. 'The first shots didn't even sound like gunshots, more like firecrackers; only later did I realise what they were. Then I looked. There were four of them carrying a girl out of there,' she pointed an unvarnished nail at the corner of Belmont. 'They—'
'The girl, how were they carrying her?'
'Two had her by the shoulders, two carried her legs here behind the knee.'